a blog about perfume

Etat Libre d’Orange You or Someone Like You ~ new fragrance

French niche line Etat Libre d’Orange has launched You or Someone Like You, a new fragrance made in collaboration with author Chandler Burr, and named for his first novel.

Los Angeles. In this, the city of fallen angels, fantasy rules.

In On the Road, Jack Kerouac wrote, “LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities.” It’s the city described by Woody Allen’s character in Annie Hall as the city where “the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light.”

But they come, the dreamers, for the sunshine and the possibilities, to this land of opportunity, where hope springs eternal. Whatever they’re searching for — happiness, love, money, fame — the temptations lure them deeper and deeper into this concrete paradise.

Does Los Angeles have a scent? It’s impossible to say. But Chandler Burr knows Los Angeles. And Chandler Burr knows perfume. So we decided to collaborate on a fragrance that an LA woman might wear. And we gave it the name of Chandler’s novel, set in Los Angeles.

And you dreamers, with your dreams — you might flourish, you might wither, but you don’t give up. You keep coming, or you think about coming, and sometimes you stay.

Because someday, someone just might be looking for you, pointing at you, wanting you. Or someone like you.

You or Someone Like You was developed by perfumer Caroline Sabas. The notes include rose, mint and herbs.

Etat Libre d’Orange You or Someone Like You is available in 50 or 100 ml.

I forgot how well Robin knows me. We’re only now finishing the visual and the short film for the scent’s launch on April 3, and I’m almost done with my, well, statement, I guess, on the scent, but one of the things I’ve written (and will keep in) is, “if you need to know what it’s made of, You [Or Someone Like You] is not for you.” Etienne de Swardt, the head of Etat, readily agreed when I asked that in releasing it we not at any point talk about the raw materials. Robin mentioned mint, and it’s true that a mint trope plays an important role in the work, but Caroline’s method of creating that was ingenious and both obviates and transcends, in my view, any discussion of what materials she did or didn’t use; the point – as Robin I’m afraid has heard me say more than a few times – is the work.